Kisses all around

Art, so they say, is sometimes really nothing more than a happy accident. And was that ever true for me with last week’s cover image of that cute, little ceramic guy all puckered up and just whistling away.

Oh, sure, the image was adorable in its own right, with its general form following its overall function and doing the one thing that it was supposed to do, which was attract readers to writer Lizzie Hedrick’s excellent story inside on Monrovia’s Carole Anne Kaufman’s efforts at putting her talented lips to competitive use in a whistling tournament in Japan next month.

But that was all well planned out and hardly an accident. My personal mental aesthetic pileup over that image came only after a few things had dawned on me the following day, well after the heat of deadline and the paper had hit the streets.

One thing that struck me as particularly noteworthy — to be fair, something that most folks didn’t really know — was that this was actually the last edition of the Weekly in the form that we have come to know and love over the past five years, as designed, and assigned that distinctive broad-shouldered PW logo, the paper’s proud flag, by former Art Director Micheal Swank.

Only at that moment did I realize that our little friend on the cover may be a little more complex than first thought. Heck, for all anyone knew he could have been puckering up for another thing that lips do besides make music — and that’s kiss. All things considered, he could have been just as easily interpreted as blowin’ the ol’ P-Dub a big ol’ kiss goodbye.

Then again, by the same token, kisses work two ways. Could our little hero have been instead giving us a big kiss hello, welcoming us into a new age of distinction for the award-winning Pasadena Weekly, which marks its 25th anniversary next year?

For someone who’s been around nearly as long as the paper, one might think I would have thought of all that before we sent pages to the press, but at first I didn’t really get any of the other messages being emitted by that otherwise straightforward image. I guess that’s primarily because none of us on staff have had time lately to think of anything much other than the paper’s redesign, a process that has taken more than a few months, testing the creative limits of Art Director Joel Vendette, Production Manager Yvonne Guerrero, their crew — Alex Prompongsatorn, Carla Marroquin and Maricela Estrada — and Publisher Jon Guynn.

Today, the end result of all that fretting is the paper in your hands — truly one of the most readable, attractive, useful and relevant publications in Southern California.

Also hardly an accident, all of this was the product of months of hard work and design, redesign and more redesign before finding the right mix of elements that people care about most, and then adding new sections that you, our readers, have said you want to see.

Of course, we have always been a very newsy paper, as well as one that places a very strong emphasis on the arts and the local dining scene, one of the most vibrant in the country for a city the size of Pasadena.

Our crack news and feature writers — Deputy Editor Joe Piasecki, City Reporter André Coleman and General Assignment Reporter Carl Kozlowski — have all been winning major awards at the local, state and national levels for the past five years, and now they have veteran LA alternative newsman-turned-copy editor John Seeley making their stories even better and more readable. So relax; those guys aren’t going anywhere.

Then, after adding a little graphic polish to each of those areas — including our opinion section featuring former Weekly Publisher Jim Laris, humorist Ellen Snortland, longtime activist and former Weekly owner Marvin Schachter, deep political thinker Hannah Naiditch, political pundit Earl Ofari Hutchinson and a host of community columnists — we folded in some new features, one of them Five Questions with Aaron Proctor.

Proctor has made a name for himself among Pasadena insiders with his quirky and often hilarious blog on City Hall politics, which is a must-read for anyone following what’s really going on in
this town.

Except for an improved look and presentation, Letters, Opinion and News will all appear much the same way they did before, in that order. We will also have an Arts section, much as before, which will feature streamlined event listings which, thanks to longtime Calendar Editor John Sollenberger, have been retooled to run by day, not subject matter.

Naturally, we’ll still have one of the best music critics in the business in Bliss, and we’ll still keep you apprised of everything going on at every club from here to Los Feliz with the most comprehensive and easy-to-follow club listings in this end of LA County. Andy Klein is still onboard, and together with Lisa Miller, and occasionally Jana J. Monji and Kozlowski, will continue bringing you insightful reviews and criticism of the film world’s latest offerings.

Only now Life, a new section featuring five new writers, will get in between — literally. After News, which opens with its own front page, comes our first feature story, which will end the section with a two-page spread, or double-truck, as they say in the business.

Then Life, which also has its own right-side front page, will open with a review by either veteran food critic Erica Wayne or Dan O’Heron, accompanied by short dining news tidbits and restaurant listings designed to get you to the hottest place in town with the least amount of effort.

But it is in Life where we see the most new features, including an outdoors column by naturalist and author Christopher Nyerges, snappy pearls from witty writer but admitted driving dunce Jen Hadley, a look at the ins and outs of the local real estate market with Joanna Beresford, advice on some of life’s everyday problems from local family therapist Patti Carmalt-Vener, and a hunt for the hottest looks at the best prices by up-and-coming Pasadena fashionistas Karol Ann Bergman and Erin Loomis.

After that, we follow with another double-truck feature, this time that week’s offering from the world of art. That then leads us to the Arts section, which, like the others, opens with its own distinctive front page story on the hottest act in town that particular week.

From there we continue with music, a much more visually appealing calendar, club listings, club reviews, stories on theater, literature and art exhibits from a host of writers — including April Caires, Leigh Kennicott, Jessica Hamlin and Jenine Baines — and finally close with a brief look at the
week in entertainment and a peek ahead at the next week with our new Eight Days feature.

Even with all its many new features, we think you’ll find that the paper is actually a pretty fast and fulfilling read. Three simple words really sum it all up: concise, clean and complete, which is how most people really want their News/Life/Arts delivered to them each week.

I’d say all that is worth at least a kiss, maybe two. I hope you agree. Welcome
to the new and vastly improved Pasadena Weekly.